A Gambling Man by David Baldacci (ebook audio reader .txt) 📕

figure of Sawyer Armstrong was prominent among them, as were his two goons, Tony and Hank.

And there were three other men that Archer didn’t recognize.

The car pulled to a stop but kept on its headlights. Stepping out of the car was another person that Archer did know.

Beth Kemper hurried over to her father, and they held a quick and apparently heated conversation, at least by their body language, because Archer could hear none of it. The brief meeting ended with Armstrong and his group climbing into the two cars and driving off, leaving Kemper alone.

Archer saw the dot of flame emerge as the woman lit a cigarette and leaned against her car, which he now recognized as the little Triumph Roadster convertible he’d seen back at the Kemper estate. The woman stared out at the ocean and smoked her cigarette while Archer continued to watch and contemplated what to do. Part of him wanted to approach her, see what was going on. But his professional instincts—such that he had—told him that would be the wrong move, for any number of reasons. If he did that and she told her father that Archer had seen them come in on the boat from God knew where in the middle of the night, Archer figured he would get another visit from Tony and Hank, and it would be his last visit with anyone ever. His final resting place might be the very same ocean Beth Kemper was staring at, with cement shoes encasing his feet as he sank to the bottom to realize his new destiny as plankton.

She dropped her finished cigarette and scrunched it flat with the heel of her shoe, then got into her car and drove slowly off. Archer swiftly moved after the convertible. He knew full well there was no way he could really follow her on foot if she sped up and vanished from sight. Fortunately, she didn’t go far. As Archer trotted along behind, she drove only three blocks before she parked the car at the curb and got out. Two motorcycles, one with a sidecar, were pulled up on the pavement in front.

Archer eyed the twenty-four-hour sign of the restaurant as she walked in.

He waited for a few minutes and followed.

Chapter 36

ARCHER STOOD IN THE DOORWAY of the hole-in-the-wall diner. Its yellow, pebbled floors were sticky linoleum, its booths shiny red vinyl, its tabletops slapdash laminate of no memorable design, and its walls painted a sea-foam green with the overhead whirly fans moving at the pace of a man with nowhere to go. There was a jukebox, but it was as dark and silent as the night.

There were three other customers in the place besides Beth Kemper. All three were around nineteen or twenty, and all were clustered around her booth, apparently giving the lady trouble, while a flustered waitress in her forties hovered nearby, looking uncertain as to what to do.

Archer heard one of the young men, tall and pudgy with a crew cut and muscled arms and shoulders showing under his T-shirt, say, “Hey, baby, we got some gin back at our place. You need to join us. Good times, sugar doll, good times.”

His skinny, acned friend laughed and parroted, “Good times, sugar doll.”

“Sure like to see your gams without anything on ’em,” said Crew Cut. “Bet they’re a knockout, like you.”

The third man was lean and lanky, had dark, greased hair, and wore denim jeans stiff as a two-by-four, scuffed black motorcycle boots, and a brown leather bomber jacket; the fanned-out top half of a switchblade stuck out of his rear pants pocket like a cobra’s head.

Kemper, for her part, was smoking another cigarette and looking extremely bored. She seemed to perk up when she saw Archer coming.

“Mrs. Kemper?” said Archer, walking over.

All of the men turned to eye him, and there wasn’t a friendly look in the bunch, which was no surprise, thought Archer. What guy liked his crude lovemaking interrupted?

Crew Cut said, “Hey, Bud, we’re having a talk with the lady here, so take a powder.”

Archer drew closer. “That’s funny. I have a scheduled meeting with the ‘lady.’”

“Scram,” said Switchblade, transferring an unlit cigarette from between his lips to behind his right ear, as though that movement constituted a plain threat.

Archer moved closer while Kemper continued to eye him with interest. “Don’t make this difficult, boys,” he said.

Crew Cut seemed to take this reference personally because he shoved Acne aside and said, “Who you calling a boy, mac?”

Archer looked around and shrugged. “We seem to be the only males here, so I’ll leave it to you to figure out.”

Kemper snorted at that one, which only made Crew Cut angrier. “You know him?” he demanded, wheeling around on Kemper.

She smiled benignly and waved her cigarette smoke away from her. “Not as much as I’d like to.”

Confused by this, Crew Cut turned and shot Switchblade a glance along with a jerk of the head in Archer’s direction that could not have been clearer.

Archer sighed. If he had a sawbuck for every time he’d seen that same look communicated in that same clumsy fashion.

Switchblade went for his knife, but before he could open the blade, Archer laid him out with a punch so hard, it knocked him into the next booth. He lay there, his nose bloody, a tooth wobbly, and his mind crushed into unconsciousness.

Crew Cut screamed profanities and drew a fist back. Archer swept aside the front of his jacket where the .38 sat prominently. Crew Cut froze.

Archer said, “You want to see my credentials now, or wait until after you get booked for harassing this lady and trying to have your buddy knife me?”

Acne said fearfully, “Y-you’re…a cop, mister?”

Archer didn’t even bother to look at him. He kept his gaze on Crew Cut with his fist still cocked. “In the meantime, unless you want your parents to have to spend their hard-earned money bailing you ‘boys’ out, grab your friend, throw some cold water on his face, get on your